Uruguay;s Lorenzo Fernandez, left, Pedro Cea and Hector Scarone celebrate their World Cup triumph in 1930. Fernandez and Scarone could add their medals to the 1928 Olympic ones they won in Amsterdam. Five years later Fernandez would complete the set with the South American championship. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Juan Mata and Javi Martinez are the only two players picked for the Spain World Cup 2012, Euro 2012 and London 2012 Olympic squads," begins Michiel Jongsma. "If they manage to win the tournament, will they become the first to be champions (never mind reigning champions) in all three tournaments?"

It didn't happen for Mata, Martínez and co – and it would have been a unique treble – but a few players have been reigning Olympic and world champions or reigning Olympic and continental champions, and a handful in the men and women's games have held all three (though not at the same time).

Uruguay's José Andrade, Peregrino Anselmo, Héctor Castro, Pedro Cea, Lorenzo Fernández, Álvaro Gestido, Ángel Melogno, José Nasazzi, Pedro Petrone, Héctor Scarone, Domingo Tejera, Santos Urdinarán all won gold at the 1928 Olympics then the inaugural World Cup in 1930. Castro, Nasazzi and Fernández was also part of the 1935 South American championship-winning squad, but by that time Italy were World Cup holders.

Lev Yashin, Anatoli Maslenkin, Igor Netto and Valentin Ivanov of the Soviet Union all won gold at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, then followed it up with victory in the European championships 1960, while Pierre Wome, Samuel Eto'o, Geremi, Patrick M'Boma and Lauren were reigning Africa Cup of Nations champions when they won gold at the 2000 Games in Sydney.

In the women's game Briana Scurry, Cindy Parlow, Carla Overbeck, Tiffany Roberts, Brandi Chastain, Shannon MacMillan, Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, Tisha Venturini and Tiffeny Milbrett were all part of the all-conquering USA squad of the late 1990s that won gold at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, then followed it up with victory in the women's World Cup in 1999.

Three women have completed the holy trinity of Olympic, European and World titles, although they did not hold all three at the same time. Norway's Hege Riise, Bente Nordby and Gro Espeseth won the 1993 European Championship, the World Cup in 1995 and were still around to pick up a gold in Sydney in 2000.

NOT YOU AGAIN

"Italy face England on Wednesday, having been knocked out of Euro 2012 by the Azzurri less than two months ago," writes Andy Morris. "Is this the first time England will face their major-tournament nemesis in their very next fixture?

In short, yes. The closest England have ever previously been to this unlikely double-header was in 1958 when Walter Winterbottom's team were beaten by the USSR at the World Cup in Sweden on 17 June then took a modicum of revenge against the Soviets on 22 October of the same year with a Johnny Haynes-inspired 5-0 win at Wembley. A Home Championship match against Northern Ireland, though, was the filling in that sandwich on 4 October.

At the other end of the scale, it is 12 years and counting since Romania dumped England out of Euro 2000 with victory in Charleroi …

ATVIDABERGS FF: FEMINIST ICONS?

"Having just read about the heroic deeds of Swedish side Åtvidabergs FF during the early 1970s (with two Swedish league titles in '72 and '73, a victory over Chelsea in the 1971-72 Cup Winners' Cup and a near-victory over Bayern Munich in the 1973-74 European Cup), I saw that their crest has a venus symbol in it," writes Lemmy Vachousek. "What is the history behind this crest? Am I misinterpreting this symbol completely and it has nothing to do with women at all? Or was it maybe a feminist political message by the club's founders? Talking about politics and crests, do you know of (other) football club crests that bear political messages, verbally or symbolically?"

Disappointingly, the circle-with-a-cross-underneath is also a symbol for copper. And, predictably, Atvidaberg is an area rich in the stuff (the symbol also crops up on the town crest).

As for the second part of the question, we'll open that one up to the floor – any clubs with crests that carry political messages? Send them to the usual address.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

Following on from a question about Mike Reed's fist-pumping celebration of a Liverpool goal, we asked back in 2006: "Any one have more any tales of inappropriate refereeing conduct?"

There were a couple of good ones. "I recall seeing footage from the end of the 1971 FA Cup final after Arsenal had beaten Liverpool 2-1 after extra-time," says Steve Hewlett. "When he blew the final whistle, I'm sure referee Norman Burtenshaw fell to his knees, pumping his fists towards the heavens." It's tough to get more than anecdotal evidence on this one – they didn't have it on YouTube – but it seems to be true. Burtenshaw claimed afterwards that he was simply celebrating the fact that the game hadn't gone to a replay.

That excuse lost what little credence it had when, a few months later, he presided over Arsenal's 6-2 battering of Benfica. Burtenshaw's performance was so bad that he was mobbed by Benfica players, who tried to beat the crap out of him – a task that would clearly have taken a fairly long time. He'd had a chance to brush up on his self-defence skills a few years earlier, mind. When Aston Villa beat Millwall 2-1 in October 1967, the Den crowd were so incensed they stormed the pitch and surrounded Burtenshaw. He had to be carried from the pitch after being knocked unconscious.

The German referee Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder, by contrast, was knocked sideways by a few pre-match liveners. "It was November 8 1975 when, in the Bundesliga, Werder Bremen played against Hannover 96," scene-sets Eberhard Spohd. "The referee Ahlenfelder surprised everyone with some seriously strange decisions – including blowing for half-time after 29 minutes. A linesman indicated his mistake and Ahlenfelder played 16 minutes' added time. Then, during the half-time interval, he stuck his tongue out at a photographer, and Bremen's president Böhmert said: 'For this show we could have charged a higher entrance fee.' Ahlenfelder of course denied drinking alcohol, but later he admitted that he had 'several Maltesers' (a schnaps) before the match. And to make things really clear to the layman, he said: 'We are men – we don't drink Fanta'."

But they've got nothing on the cunning of one inventive Italian official, as our very own James Richardson explains. "In a Napoli-Salernitana local derby in 1945, a referee named Stampacchia lost control of the match and faced a pitch invasion from a large a hostile crowd," he writes. "At this, Signore Stampacchia wisely pretended to have been shot. A large and concerned crowd gathered around the fallen official's tragically supine form – at which point, tempers having cooled nicely, Stampacchia got back up and continued the game."

Can you help?

"Sheffield United ended last season with defeat on penalties to Huddersfield," notes Charlie Wooden. "Then they began this campaign with a defeat on penalties to Burton Albion in the Capital One Cup. Are they the first team ever to complete this unlikely double?"

"Real Madrid have consistently benefited from dubious referees' decisions over the years, sometimes bordering on the surreal," begins Duncan Hawthorne. "I remember one such occasion involving Roberto Carlos some years ago. He committed a clear foul on an attacker just outside the penalty area, but the referee just waved 'play on'. The Madrid defender, however, not realising he'd got away with it bent down and picked up the ball (inside the penalty area by now), and handed it to the keeper. The other team called for a penalty, but again, the referee just waved 'play on'. I've looked for this incident on Google and YouTube, but the problem is I can't remember who Madrid were playing, and when I describe it to my friends they find it too far fetched to believe. Can someone confirm that I didn't just dream this, and that it really happened? And who was the unfortunate team they were being helped against on this particular occasion?"

"While browsing the results of the 2012-13 Europa league qualifying phase, I discovered that the little Andorran town of Santa Coloma had two teams participating in the first qualifying round (both lost, however)," writes René Dumont. "I checked the Catalan wikipedia page about this town and discovered that Santa Coloma has a population of under 3,000 inhabitants. So my question is : is Santa Coloma the smallest settlement ever to have two teams participating in a European competition ?"